The pressure grows for a quick Nato exit from Afghanistan

Analysis: There is a growing realisation that nothing useful can be done by US and British troops exposed on the front line

Afghan soldiers during a graduation ceremony in Herat province on Wednesday. Training of Afghan forces is key to Nato plans to hand over front line security to local troops in 2014. Photograph: Jalil Rezayee/EPA

Wednesday 7 March 2012 09.16 EST
First published on Wednesday 7 March 2012 09.16 EST

Will the US, Britain and other countries with combat troops in Afghanistan cut their losses and leave Afghanistan as quickly as possible, leading UK security analysts were asked. Yes, came the resounding reply.

This was not a knee-jerk response to the news that six more British soldiers had been attacked, presumed dead. It was a growing realisation, even among those who in the past have been supportive of the Nato-led mission in Afghanistan, that nothing useful can be done now by foreign troops who continue to be exposed on the front line.

On Tuesday, Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator and most hawkish supporter of America's military presence in Afghanistan, said unless President Hamid Karzai relented on his demands that night raids against suspected insurgents must stop and the US hands over to the Afghans control of prisoners "then there is no hope of winning. None".

These two issues are crucial in the current negotiations on a US-Afghanistan status of forces agreement, which would provide the legal basis for the presence of US – and, by implication, British – troops in Afghanistan beyond the end of 2014, the deadline President Barack Obama and David Cameron have set for transferring full control of the country, and the country's security, to the Afghans.

"I am going to pull the plug on Afghanistan from a personal point of view if we don't get this strategic partnership signed," Graham said.

Karzai seems unlikely to relent, independent observers said on Wednesday.

The senator's comments reflect the many contradictory and conflicting pressures facing Britain and the US in Afghanistan. There is widespread recognition, for example, that night raids by US and UK special forces may have led to the killing or capture of Taliban commanders. But these are precisely the commanders influenced by the old Taliban leadership under Mullah Omar who might have been persuaded to come to the negotiating table – a hope Cameron expressed in the Commons on Wednesday. Yet these Taliban commanders are being replaced by younger, more radical, leaders indulging in more brutal tactics and strongly opposed to any deal with Karzai, let alone foreigners.

That Britain's military intervention in Afghanistan was politically driven and badly executed, is evident from the Afghan Papers, a devastating critique just published by the Royal United Services Institute.

"However we eventually interpret the outcome of Britain's fourth Afghan war … the process of engagement in it during 2006 was less than satisfactory from almost every point of view," says the institute's director, Michael Clarke.

Understandably, General Sir David Richards, chief of the defence staff, makes consoling remarks and British and US military commanders continue to express optimism. They also express concern about the deadlines and phased troop withdrawals announced by their political masters.

But just as the entry into Afghanistan was politically driven, so will the exit be. Obama has announced cuts of some 30,000 troops in Afghanistan and says the remaining 68,000 US troops there will be "coming home at a steady pace". Cameron has said Britain's 9,500-strong force (excluding 500 special forces) will be cut by 1,000 by the end of 2012 and that any British troops remaining after 2014 will no longer be in a combat role. That time frame may well be shortened at the Nato summit in Chicago in May.

"It is very unlikely that the troop drawdowns will be reversed, because of a combination of war weariness, financial pressure and the perceived reduction in the clear and present danger posed by al-Qaida," the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said in its latest military balance survey, published on Wednesday. "Indeed,", it added, "political and financial difficulties in Nato states may increase pressure to accelerate the withdrawals."

Foreign troops will leave behind massive corruption, a huge increase in heroin production, and a country reliant on foreign aid pouring in for many years to come, the IISS says in a report, Afghanistan to 2015 and Beyond.

British military commanders put on a brave face, pointing to the relative stability they have brought at least to parts of Helmand province, where more than 400 of their soldiers have now lost their lives.